The Vital Force Archive

Victor Viereck compares dry spaghetti, hard and brittle until boiling water softens it, to a body full of tension that becomes soft and flexible as Chi is added through practice.

Prompted by Julie Heryet's Folsom update, Hannah Hedrick describes her weekly class for recently released offenders, where students broke up a fight and welcomed the aggressor back, and argues against nit-picky correction.

Becky Shinas writes a rhapsodic prose poem of awakened heart, intergalactic love and shining Divine embodiment, closing on the eternal celebration of Cosmic Chi.

Julie Heryet credits Sandy McAlister's playfulness for loosening her insistence on accuracy, describing how frustrated elders at a Senior Center and inmates needing to feel safe changed her teaching priorities.

Celia Ortenberg remembers being pushed on the beach swings by her father and finds the same pause of weightlessness at the turn of Rocking Motion, with gratitude for her life and practice.

Five tenth graders at Albuquerque Academy describe what a year of T'ai Chi Chih gave them, from skepticism to grounding during a student walkout against gun violence, followed by Pyramid Poems on silence.

Carmela Beck names what keeps her practicing daily even when she does not feel like it, from easing sciatica and low back pain after an injury to a growing sense of reverence for all of life.